A shade of Gray lost on Gillard

Gary Gray
’s appointment as Minister for Resources and Energy is useful cover for a government so lacking in business credentials. It will help fill the very large hole created by
Martin Ferguson
’s decision to exit stage left.

Gray’s previous work at Woodside Petroleum and his generally common sense approach to life mean the business community will cling to his appointment as one of the few remaining political links to commercial reality in cabinet.

Whether the Prime Minister and her Treasurer will pay any attention whatever to his views is far less sure.

It was only last year, for example, that Gray was being personally targeted by the unions via newspaper ads and street protests for selling out “Aussie jobs’’.

His sin was to promote the idea of enterprise migration agreements, including the use of skilled foreign workers on temporary visas. This was, he said, to ensure massive resources projects could be built “on time and on budget’’.

That position does contrast rather awkwardly with
Julia Gillard
’s recent proclamations that she won’t tolerate these same Aussie jobs being put at risk by foreign workers on temporary visas. That strong prime ministerial argument should definitely drown out any notion of Gary Gray becoming a louder voice of reason on this issue. Certainly not when it’s going to be a key part of the government’s campaign rhetoric in areas like Western Sydney.

As a converted West Australian born in Whyalla, Gray understands the pressures and costs in the resources industry better than most – including the destructiveness of the campaigns waged in WA by various unions such as the militant Maritime Union of Australia.

But as a senior cabinet minister, Gray will be expected to support the pro-union agenda now so proudly defined by the Gillard government.

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Plenty of Ferguson’s colleagues loved to privately complain – even before he went public with his stinging criticism of Labor’s class warfare – that he was far too bloody close to the employers.

And it’s been made very clear that dissent from the government line will not be permitted in future. Or as Julia Gillard prefers to describe it, she is now leading a government of “purpose and unity’’. Of course.

But let’s not quibble about contradictions. There are so many to choose from.

The other recent significant WA appointment, for example, was Joe McDonald, one of the state’s most notorious union officials. He has been promoted to national president of the main construction division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union.

This is the same bloke
Kevin Rudd
forced out of the ALP in 2007, saying he would not tolerate the sort of “thuggish and intimidatory behaviour’’ exhibited by McDonald. These days, he’s more likely to be invited to the Lodge for a cosy dinner.

The CMFEU is one of Labor’s strongest backers financially and, increasingly, politically. Its national secretary is Michael O’Connor, Julia Gillard’s close adviser, former partner and brother to Immigration Minister
Brendan O’Connor
, who has strongly pushed the anti -457 visa line.

There’s certainly no discussion within this new government of purpose and unity that perhaps the Prime Minister has gone too far with her support for the union agenda at the expense of relations with business.

Not that the political image makers haven’t heard the criticism and rehearsed a suitably meaningless response. Consider the anodyne wording at her press conference. Any personal passion seemed to be missing as Gillard announced she was “always prepared to pursue deeper and better relationships with stakeholders in Australian society, including the business community . . . but I have very deep connections and continuing exchange with the business community now".

Well, that’s certainly one way of looking at it. The breakdown in communications and total lack of trust must all be in the business community’s imagination (and Martin Ferguson’s and Bob Hawke’s and Simon Crean’s, etc, etc).

But complicated relationships aren’t just a puzzle to those outside the confines of the Labor Party.

Gillard sat happily next to a promoted
Anthony Albanese
during the swearing in at Government House. This time last week Albanese was on track to become deputy prime minister in a reconstituted Rudd government. Now he’s one of the survivors of the Gillard purge. She argues he’s too important to the government to lose.

That may be true, especially given the growing numbers of ex-ministers watching unhappily from the back bench. Yet Albanese is another of those who believed Rudd would be a better prime minister than Gillard and was one of his key advisers during what Gillard called the “appalling and self-indulgent’’ events of last week.

Now that’s all evaporated into the silliness of the challenge that never was, Gillard is more confident than ever she is playing the role of Prime Minister exactly right. Don’t argue.